admin wrote:Posts may contain excerpts from news articles or other pieces in keeping with fair use, but any posts containing longer verbatim passages from other publications will be deleted without warning.

Also, any posts that are blatant attempts to "troll" will be deleted without warning. Repeated attempts to "troll" will result in account deactivation.

Can you please explain "blatant attempts to 'troll'" so I don't violate forum 'policy?' You have my email address if you prefer.

chance wrote:IsnÃ¢??t there a way to collect the IP address that posts originate from?

Sure there is, but it's hardly a solution to the issue you raise. For example, two forons posting from the same bank of public computer workstations in the local library are liable to show up here with the same IP address because of the common firewall they're directed through.

admin wrote:Also, any posts that are blatant attempts to "troll" will be deleted without warning. Repeated attempts to "troll" will result in account deactivation.

The fair use and long verbatim cutnpaste rules are a good idea, but I think you should let the little bushie keep trolling. Just force him to actually, like, write stuff instead of pasting it. That'll slow him down to about a crawl.

I know I don't have a say in this, but I think it's too big a can of worms to say which is the troll and which is his teensy little mind.

There does seem to be a problem with the terminology. Fair use is, by definition, not copyright infringement. The problem is that there are too many corporations each aggressively trying to redraw the boundary lines and convince people that things allowed under the law are really illegal, and using terms that concede this point seems only to help them.

Perhaps a better use would have been, "Fair use is legal and welcome on this forum"

Apparently the copyright lawyers have usually gone with the idea that a newspaper article is a "portion of a work", and if you're posting it in a limited forum for discussing its factual content and implications, that's allowed, unless it has an adverse market effect on the authors. True, the idea that a news article is a "portion" is arbitrary and stupid, but so is all intellectual property law, no?

The problem is, what all the sources seem to agree on is that there is actually no way to predict how any given case would be decided in a court, so --- it probably doesn't help to have someone called "admin" posting a "sticky" at the top of an Isthmus forum saying that "copyright violation is allowed". Yeah, someone can explain that no, that's not what he meant, but ... American juries are stupid and American lawyers charge hundreds of dollars an hour to debate this bull.

If someone is posting something without giving credit, that is not fair use.

For readability sake, it is really unnecessary to post entire friggin articles in a forum post. If we are able to log on to the forum, we are able to follow a link. I have never understood, in any of the forums I participate it, why some people feel the need to past a 1000 word or longer article in a forum post.

I have no problem with posting a paragraph here and there. But entire articles, columns, chapters, essays, etc, are completely unnecessary.

Post a link. If you don't know how to do that, contact Chuck, and I am sure he will help you.

Mike S. wrote:Apparently the copyright lawyers have usually gone with the idea that a newspaper article is a "portion of a work", and if you're posting it in a limited forum for discussing its factual content and implications, that's allowed ...

I guess I don't think there's been sufficient court action to decide either way. Not only that, but most legit media organizations probably aren't likely to spend a lot of money fighting for the Make Bush Kings of the world.

Let him get a blog of his own and publish it there if he's so hot to pass off someone else's work as his own.